Olive Garden Restaurant Fail

Today, my friend and I decided to treat ourselves to lunch at OG, one of our favorite places to eat. We arrived promptly at 11 am, were seated, made our selections, and waited for the magic to happen.

My friend's soup 'n salad came to the table, along with a big bowl of salad, so we began by serving ourselves from the salad bowl. There were big chunks of the ends of lettuce, far too many pieces of wilted lettuce, and only 2 black olives in the whole bowl. My friend finished her salad and said she'd wait to eat her soup until I received my salmon. Finally, I summoned the waiter and asked where my salmon was as it had literally been 25 minutes since I ordered it and still no sign of my entrée. He went back to the kitchen to check, and came back to tell me it would be up shortly. I urged C to eat her soup and enjoy another bowl of salad, but we both were grossed out by the salad and didn't want to eat any of what remained in the bowl.

Finally, my salmon and broccoli arrived. The broccoli was plain, no sauce/no seasoning/no butter, and it tasted just warm enough to have been put into the microwave and been heated. He offered to go back to the kitchen and get another serving of broccoli, so I decided to move on to the salmon. The salmon was dry; again, no sauce and no seasoning. I took about 3 bites and called the server back. I told him that so far, my lunch was an epic fail and I had no intention of eating anything else.

The manager came to our table and was polite and pleasant, apologizing for our meal and comping it, which was a good move as I hadn't eaten more than 4-5 bites of anything. My friend left behind most of her bowl of soup, but did manage to eat at least one serving of salad.

I appreciated the response from the employees, but left hungry enough to drive all the way home and fix myself some lunch. I won't hurry back to Olive Garden, but will give them another try ... later.